From: -Peter (pcorteen@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Nov 18 2005 - 10:17:28 GMT
Hi Erin,
it is interesting what you say about desire and belief.
I can see how someone could view them as contradictory; religious people
often think of desire as a property of evil and belief a sign of good. But
they are also both like different aspects of the same thing.
Your connection with levels is interesting too; desire seems more biological
whereas belief more social. For the inorganic level, that salt absorbs water
is inevitable and for the individual that 2 + 2 3D 3 is completely reliable;
these are not matters of desire or belief.
Desire and belief both have a temporal involvement. What is common is that
they both affect the act of valuation and thereby can be expected to cause a
different effect i.e value differently.
-Pete
On 17/11/05, Scott Roberts <jse885@localnet.com> wrote:
>
> Erin,
>
> Erin said:
> I don't understand the tetrathingy clearly but
> something you said really resonated:
>
> The key is the fourth point. The LCI is, by and
> > large what one CAN say, or
> > at least, try to say. For instance, that the more
> > one puts X under the
> > microscope, the more it starts looking like Y, and
> > vice versa, and that X
> > and Y create each other in mutual opposition
>
> Scott:
> Well, I don't understand it "clearly" either. Here's an example of it as
> insofar as I do understand it (in the example, X is duration, Y is change,
> and Z is consciousness) (this is from an old post to Platt):
>
> "The closest I have been able to come to what I think [Merrell-Wollf] is
> referring to is when I think about consciousness, in particular to its
> durational and changing aspects. To be aware of a change (say one note to
> another in a melody), something had to endure across the change. But to be
> aware of the enduring (both notes as one melody, or even one continuous
> note), something had to change. So conscious is not changing because it is
> changing, and it is changing because it is not changing. One can't get out
> of this contradictoriness with the idea that a part is staying the same
> while a part is changing, since that just pushes the problem back to the
> part that is staying the same: how can it be aware of change without
> changing, and if it is enduring through the change, how can it be
> changing?"
>
> Erin said:
> This reminds me about the discussion of
> intellect...... I feel the moq treats value as
> "desire" for the first three levels and then "value"
> at the fourth level becomes "belief".
> To me this is creating a belief/desire division. But
> as the above says the more you put belief under the
> microscope the more it resembles desire and vice
> versa. So to me if it is "value" at one level and
> "value" at another level then it is the same.
> I was just wondering if you thought belief and desire
> could be seen as contradictory or not..that is I see
> values as 'desire/belief'
>
> Scott:
> I find this very interesting, but I don't see it as a CI. The two terms,
> belief and desire are at the least mutually implicative, but I don't see
> them as mutually contradictory, as 'enduring' and 'changing' are in the
> example above. However, I think there is a CI involved, but not between
> desire and belief. See below.
>
> Erin continued:
> I think this helps me with all the pre-intellectual
> stuff too.... I feel people act that their desires are
> being filtered through beliefs and so are not living
> as passionately as they would "pre-intellect/beliefs".
> If you recognize "values" on all the levels the
> division of desires/beliefs becomes just a matter of
> degree....whereas we use desire for lower level of
> values and beliefs for higher level of values.
>
> Scott:
> I see the relation between beliefs and desires differently. As I see it,
> desire is the value that occurs when a sign invokes a belief (or the
> desire
> contributes to the value involved in actuallizing a belief). The amoeba
> has
> a belief (more carefully stated: the species amoeba has the belief, called
> an instinct) that vinegar is harmful, so on encountering vinegar, the
> amoeba
> has the desire to withdraw. Neither the encounter nor the belief on their
> own constitutes value, but the encounter with vinegar is a sign that
> invokes
> the belief about vinegar, and that results in the desire, or value. The
> amoeba has filtered the encounter with vinegar through the belief. So we
> have: no belief, then no desire, and no encounter, then no desire, in both
> cases, implying no value, implying no experience.
>
> There is no difference in this with the human case, except that each
> individual human has the freedom to question the relevant belief, and so
> overcome the desire. The hot stove example is not a case of a "pre-belief"
> experience subsequently filtered by a belief, but of two filtered
> experiences: the biological one that gets one off the stove reflexively
> (same as the amoeba encountering vinegar) and a fourth-level one of
> thinking
> about the biological encounter. It is conceivable that a human would
> dynamically *stay* on the stove, that is, question the belief that s/he
> must
> get off immediately.
>
> So if there is a CI here, it would be: X is the encounter, Y the belief,
> and
> Z the desire. This is a variation on signifier/signified/meaning, though
> showing how the signifier and signified are mutually opposed while
> mutually
> constitutive, and how they "turn into one another" is a bit of a chore (it
> is discussed in part I of Magliola's "Derrida on the Mend", though he
> doesn't use the phrase "contradictory identiy", instead he is talking
> about
> Derridean *differance*, which I believe to be the same thing.)
>
> - Scott
>
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